Georgia native Leonard Phillip Matlovich was one of the earliest activists to challenge the status of gays and lesbians in the U.S. military. Born July 6, 1943, in Savannah, at Hunter Air Force Base, Matlovich spent much of his early life in South Carolina. He enlisted in the Air Force at the age of nineteen and rose to the rank of technical sergeant. He would earn both a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his service in the Vietnam War (1964-73).

A native of southwest Virginia, Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans was one of the first women to serve on the board of directors of a major American corporation, the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Company. One of the country’s most generous philanthropists, she also set up charitable foundations to share her family’s vast fortune with others. Early Life and Marriage Letitia “Lettie” Pate was born into a prominent family, to Elizabeth Stagg and Cornelius Pate, on February 21, 1872, in the Bedford County village of Thaxton, in the far reaches of the Virginia Piedmont.

Madison County, in northeast Georgia, was created on December 5, 1811, by an act of the state legislature. Originally inhabited by Creek and Cherokee Indians, the land was gradually ceded during the colonial period to Governor James Wright of Georgia and was organized into two counties—Wilkes and Franklin. Eventually that land was divided into smaller counties, and Madison County was created from portions of Clarke, Elbert, Franklin, Jackson, and Oglethorpe counties.

McDuffie County is located on the geological fall line in east central Georgia along the Savannah River basin, thirty-five miles west of Augusta. The county, carved from Warren and Columbia counties in late 1870 by an act of the Georgia General Assembly, was named for George McDuffie, a native Georgian and distinguished lawyer, statesman, governor, and U.S. senator of South Carolina. Although relatively small (260 square miles) and postbellum in its formation, McDuffie County boasts a sizeable colonial and political heritage that predates the county’s official inception by at least a century.

The Nature's Own brand of bread is produced by Flowers Foods, a bakery founded in Thomasville in 1919. The company also produces the well-known Sunbeam and Cobblestone Mill brands, in addition to a line of snack cakes under the brand name Tesoritos. Courtesy of Flowers Foods The New Georgia Encyclopedia does not hold the copyright for this media resource and can neither grant nor deny permission to republish or reproduce the image online or in print.